


Peeling Back the Layers

by Telaryn



Series: Second Chances [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Backstory, Banter, Character Study, Crossover, Fluff, Gen, Headcanon, M/M, Secret Relationship, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 02:01:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Still unable to shake his suspicions about Skye's relationship to his childhood friend Faith, Clint petitions Coulson to let him take Skye to Avengers Tower for the day.  The official reason for the field trip is so Clint and Natasha can "analyze" Ward's training techniques and give Skye some pointers.  Unofficially the days activities provide him an opening to tell Skye what he suspects and offer her a chance to confirm whether it's true or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peeling Back the Layers

“You wanted to see me boss?” In typical May fashion, Melinda hadn’t given Skye any details – just walked into the lab and told Skye she was to report to Coulson’s quarters immediately.

She definitely hadn’t given any indication that Agent Clint Barton was even on board, much less also with Coulson. “Now would not be one of the times for a smart-ass remark,” Coulson said smoothly, as though she hadn’t just seen him let go Barton’s hand a little too quickly. “From either of you,” he added, glancing up at the sniper. Barton raised both hands immediately, affecting a hilarious “who, me?” expression that Skye couldn’t help giggling at.

Coulson sighed, but Skye could tell this was familiar territory for the two men. “Agent Barton has agreed to do an independent assessment of your weapons and combat training to date,” he said, turning his attention entirely to Skye – who felt her stomach do a slow, queasy roll and then try and tie itself into a knot. “You’ll spend the day working with him; any corrections he wants to make in either your form or your training, you’ll let him.”

She’d been around SHIELD long enough to pick up what a big deal this was, but surprisingly Skye felt a surge of loyalty for her Supervising Officer. “What about Agent Ward?”

“Ward has already been informed of the shift in schedule,” Coulson told her. “He has no argument with it.”

Skye waited for a moment, but when no further details were forthcoming, shrugged. “Works for me.”

“Bring her back in one piece,” Coulson warned as Barton leaned down to kiss him on the cheek.

“Are you guys allowed to be public like that?” Skye asked, once they were clear of the office and Barton had moved up to pace her. The sniper grinned at her.

“Hell no – you didn’t see how uncomfortable he was?” Barton paused long enough to badge them through the final door into the hold. “He’s not my handler anymore though, and I think he’s more comfortable bending the rules around you.” He glanced at her as they headed down the ramp towards the outside. “He likes you, you know.”

She’d hoped that was the case, but Skye felt a pleasant warmth creep through her chest at the confirmation. “And you like him too,” Clint said, noting her reaction. “Should I be jealous?”

The question startled a laugh out of her. “I don’t think I’m his type,” she admitted as they stepped into the open air and she saw the classic sports car waiting for them. “You, on the other hand,” she continued, “you guys are so compatible it’s almost clichéd.” She glanced at him, grinning. “Sports car? Really? You don’t look old enough for a mid-life crisis.”

“No mid-life crisis,” Clint quipped without breaking stride. “Small penis.”  
**********************************  
 _”Go slow,”_ had been Phil’s automatic response when Clint had finally filled him in on his suspicions regarding Skye. _“She’s a lot like you were when we first met, and she’s too important to me for you to run her off if this proves to be nothing.”_

It had been easy for Clint to agree – he knew full well the sort of minefield he was choosing to navigate by taking this on. _“Mom was a whore,”_ Faith had said bluntly once he presented her with his suspicions. _“She was a whore and a junkie, and as far as answering your question?”_ He’d heard in her voice then how the possibility of a heretofore unknown sibling bothered her. _“I don’t know. It’s possible.”_

In the end she agreed to come when he called, which left him to crack the puzzle Skye represented all on his own. _Okay, not entirely on my own,_ he was forced to amend as they got in his car and headed off for the Tower. _”Breaking the girl of all the bad habits Ward has already taught her will go faster if I handle it,”_ Natasha had said when he’d told her of his plan.

Clint hadn’t objected; he’d been secretly hoping she would back his play. Natasha kept people off balance sometimes just by being in the same room with them; it would make it easier for him to spot the right ‘in’ with Skye if she wasn’t on her guard.

“So,” he said, once they safely on the highway, “feel free to answer or tell me to go to hell, but I’m going to start our day off by playing the intrusive boyfriend.” He paused, thinking of the man he’d very nearly lost and how it would kill him to lose Coulson again. “How’s he really doing, being back in the field?”

“AC?” Skye asked, and Clint snorted – simultaneously startled and amused by the nickname. “He’s great,” she said without hesitation. “Really great. Guy knows his stuff, and he can still kick ass. You should have seen us when we were attacked by these guys in Peru…”

“I saw the aftermath,” Clint said, remembering how Coulson had called him on their return, inviting him over and asking him to stay the night for the first time since they’d actually decided to make their feelings official. There were obviously things he was keeping from his “kids” – mostly having to do with his uncertainty that he’d come out of whatever Loki had done to him even close to the man he’d been. Clint didn’t begrudge him that worry and it wasn’t the kind of confidence he would break unless he absolutely had to.

“It’s gotta be weird, right?”

Surprised out of the dark turn his thoughts had abruptly taken, Clint glanced at her. “Weirdest show on earth, remember? What in particular?”

Her expression was unexpectedly serious. “Having him back after you thought he was dead.”

 _Oh. That._ Swallowing hard as he forced back all the emotions Skye’s simple question was threatening to drag up, all he said in the end was “I hope you never have to find out.”  
**********************  
The morning _flew_. Despite her best intentions, Skye nearly broke down in tears when Clint finally called a break for lunch. She’d been ready for the physical exhaustion, especially when she saw Natasha Romanoff waiting for them on the roof of the tower. What she hadn’t been prepared for was the absolute _mental_ exhaustion that left her unsteady on her feet as she made her way to the table where a veritable banquet of food had been laid out for them.

“Water,” Natasha told her as Clint poured a glass full and pressed it into her trembling hand. “As much as you can drink over the next forty-eight hours without making yourself sick. You’ve released a lot of toxins into your system this morning; water is the healthiest way to continue flushing them out.”

Skye nodded meekly, taking a healthy swallow before trying to manage a controlled fall into the nearest chair. “What are you laughing at?” she grumbled, realizing that Clint was grinning at her from across the table.

The archer’s smile broadened. “You are so like me it’s scary. Here.” He finished unwrapping the sandwich in his hands and passed it across to her. Skye’s stomach made an embarrassingly loud noise as the smell of real food hit her nostrils. “Try not to inhale it – you’ve still got to survive the rest of the day.”

“What do you mean I’m like you?” Skye asked, after forcing herself to take a small bite, thoroughly chew and swallow it. Conversation was a good way to pace herself through the food, and when else was she going to have a chance to talk with a pair of real live Avengers? She glanced at Natasha. “And is he insulting me?”

The redhead smiled. It wasn’t as ready a grin as Clint seemed to have, but Skye sensed it was genuine. “I think he means that you don’t like blindly following orders,” she said, popping a fat grape into her mouth. “You prefer knowing why you’re being asked to do something.”

“Coulson told us you were driving Ward to distraction with the questions,” Clint said. “Since it really doesn’t take that much longer to give you the theory behind what we’re trying to teach you, Nat and I figured we’d see just how sharp you were.”

Skye exhaled softly against the sudden nervous flutter that had set up residence in her stomach. “And?” she asked. “How sharp am I?” As much as she was coming to like Melinda May and Grant Ward, separately as well as together they had a way of making her feel stupid that she hadn’t had to endure in years.

Natasha was the first one to answer. “For someone who was never raised to this life, you pick up concepts very quickly. You have problems translating the intellectual understanding to physical execution, but no more than I’d expect from somebody in your circumstances. With proper training and continued practice, I think it will all come together.”

Skye only realized her jaw had dropped when Clint reached across and closed her mouth with one gentle finger pressing under her chin. “Thanks,” she managed, hoping that the heat she could feel in her cheeks wasn’t as spectacular a blush as she feared.

“Don’t worry about having to tell Ward any of this,” Clint added as the three of them fell to their food in earnest. “I’m going to talk to Coulson when I get you back tonight, and if he gives me rights to the popcorn concession Nat’s going to talk to Ward herself.”

His partner said something in Russian then that made Clint’s eyes widen and resulted in him throwing a piece of bread across the table at her. “What?” Skye asked, looking from one to the other of them in amazement. _They sure don’t act like superheroes._ “What did she say?”

She expected Clint to answer, but Natasha said finally, “I said that if he continues to insist on training you to fight like you are some ‘roided out twenty year old football jock that he and I are going to have some private tutoring sessions where I will show him things I learned to do when I was eight.”  
*********************  
It was a slightly cleaned up version of what she’d really said, but if it occurred to Skye to question him about the translation Clint was going to plead the fifth. _Besides, it’s not like she’s wrong._ When he was capable of being objective and not stewing about the fact that Grant Ward was the one watching Coulson’s back instead of him, Clint could admit that Ward was a good agent. Probably even a great one, but the path he’d started out with Skye wasn’t going to end anywhere good for either of them.

He wondered if Skye realized how smoothly she was being manipulated by Natasha’s uncharacteristic willingness to share. The idle-sounding comment about things she’d learned to do when she was eight triggered the expected question about Natasha’s past, and what could she possibly have learned when she was eight that would frighten somebody like Ward?

Clint finished his food while the two women talked; ultimately deciding that Skye had no clue there was anything else going on. _I should probably feel bad about that,_ he thought, acknowledging that he did feel somewhat guilty about the way they were approaching this. Nat, on the other hand, had wanted to go even further. _”We need to leave her an out,”_ she’d argued. _”Coulson wants you to go slow – this way minimizes the chances that she’ll bolt.”_

And now they knew Skye had in fact been born in Boston; that she’d been taken into the foster care system before she was old enough to have any memory of a life “before”, and had no idea who her biological parents were, much less if she had family out there somewhere. “Legally I only aged out of the system when I turned eighteen,” she said in response to a seemingly innocent question from Natasha. “Really, the people in charge stop worrying about you when you turn sixteen. You know you’re a lost cause – they know you’re a lost cause. It’s just marking time for those last two years.”

“I have a friend from Boston,” he said, finally inserting himself back into the conversation. “She grew up in the system too.” He paused, considering Faith’s experience with Boston’s Department of Children and Families. “Okay, not entirely in the system. Her mother was a total nightmare, but she was all Faith had.”

“I get that,” Skye said. “No matter how bad it is, you hold onto anything they tell you is yours with both hands. I don’t remember anybody named Faith when I was growing up though,” she added. “In case you thought we might have known each other?” She was confused now, and he could sense the walls starting to go up.

“No, that’s not it,” he hastened to tell her, pulling out his smart phone and calling up his most recent picture of Faith. “She’s closer to my age than yours – I’d be stunned if you did know her.” Drawing in a slow, careful breath, he passed the phone across to Skye. “You remind me of her though.” He saw the girl’s eyes widen slightly and knew that on some level her brain was picking out all the physical markers they shared. “Enough that with your shared backgrounds I have to wonder…”

“No,” Skye said softly, and even if the sunlight hadn’t caught a shimmer in her dark eyes Clint could hear the old grief and pain in her voice when she spoke. “Hacker, remember? Do you really think I never went looking for my bio-family?”

“I don’t,” Natasha said, before Clint could think of anything to say in response. “I think that by the time you were in a position to look you figured there were some things in life you were better off not knowing.”

Clint didn’t need to be a genius to know that she’d scored; Skye’s silence was confirmation enough. “Faith’s leaving it up to you,” he said gently. “She’s open to meeting you and seeing if you guys can form a relationship, but also she doesn’t want to pressure you into something you’re not ready for.”  
*******************  
They hadn’t expected her to answer on the spot; Skye was grateful for that. Clint had also freely answered her questions about her potential sister, so that now Skye knew enough about _Faith Lehane_ to do a little digging of her own.

Once it looked like her curiosity was satisfied, Natasha insisted they go back to work. Her afternoon was only slightly easier, but out of deference to a lunch that was bigger than it probably should have been it mostly focused on getting her comfortable with the weapon Ward had assigned her as her sidearm. To her relief, Natasha had a handful of mnemonics at her disposal that helped Skye solidify her knowledge of the different parts of the gun and the order in which they came apart. “Reverse it to put them back together,” she said, as Skye tried not to think too hard about the fact that this was something the red-haired woman had learned to do when she was _ten_.

“One thing being in SHIELD teaches you,” Clint offered later, once they’d finished up, said their goodbyes, and started on the journey back to the ‘bus’, “is that there’s really no point in dwelling on how much your childhood sucked. Somebody’s always got a worse story – better to focus on the moment and making sure you’re judged on what you do and who you are _now._ ”

It was nothing she hadn’t already figured out for herself – exhibit ‘A’ being everything Natasha had been willing to tell her about her childhood – but one thing Skye had learned on this mind-blowing day was that she liked Clint and she liked listening to him talk. 

“You said you and…Faith…were friends?” she asked abruptly, after the things had been quiet for a few miles.

“Mmm-hmm,” the archer acknowledged. “We ran in some of the same circles growing up – learned to watch each other’s backs.”

The bus came into view over the horizon. Skye felt her heart rate speed up – she was running out of time, with no way of knowing when she would be able to talk to Barton like this again. “Do you think she’d like me?” It wasn’t strictly the question she’d planned on asking, but more often than Skye liked her heart still dictated her choices.

To his credit, instead of jumping to defend her with a lot of lame platitudes, Clint simply reached inside his jacket pocket and drew out a small, sealed case. “When you’re ready, give that to Simmons,” he said, passing it across to her. “Tell her that you need to see if your DNA matches what’s inside. She’ll get a sample from you and handle the rest.”


End file.
